Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook (20 page)
Read Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook Online
Authors: Debbie Stoller
Ribbed-for-Her-Pleasure Scarf
(left)
,
Go-Go Garter Stitch Scarf
(center)
, Kitschy Kerchief
(right)
THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, OR WHAT NOT TO KNIT FOR YOUR BOYFRIEND
Here’s a legend known to all knitters across the land: It is bad luck to knit a sweater for a boyfriend, as it guarantees that the relationship will end. Of course, if you’re looking to rid yourself of said boyfriend, this might not be the most direct way of going about it. Like most myths, it holds a good amount of truth. If you’ve spent a month or two working long and hard on a sweater for your guy, only to have him not appreciate it enough or not wear it very often (and this happens all the time), you might catch a lingering resentment and wind up dumping the ungrateful lout. The theory, I suppose, is that if you’re married to the guy and make him a sweater he never wears, you’re still stuck with him.
LEARNING TO SEW SEAMS, PICK UP STITCHES, AND BLOCK YOUR WORK
Sewing your knit fabric together, knitting on collars, and working away your yarn ends is known as “finishing” in the knitting biz. That’s because once you’ve done this part, you’re finished! Unfortunately, it’s also considered to be a tedious chore by most knitters. You’ve knit and knit and knit your heart out, and now you have to put away your beloved knitting needles, take out your yarn needle, and—dammit!—sew. The horror.
Some knitters hate this part so much they bring all their knitted pieces to their local yarn store and pay to have them stitched together. But don’t let the naysayers get you down. I’m here to tell you that the finishing process doesn’t have to finish you off. In fact, finishing can be pretty fun—exciting, even. For one thing, there’s the thrill of sewing a seam, pulling your thread taut, and watching as the sides of your pieces fit together like Tetris blocks, the sewing yarn itself vanishing into a perfect, invisible seam. It’s also immensely satisfying when you pick up your stitches in exactly the right place so that it looks like they grew directly out of the neckline, rather than having been added on at the end. And nothing beats the miracle of blocking your handmade sweater, which starts out looking lumpy and sweated over and irregular, only to emerge from the process looking like it had been knit by the steady, skilled hands of a mythical knitting goddess.
Finishing gives your projects nothing less than a fabulous makeover, better than the best “it’s time to update your bad ’80s look!” episode of your favorite trashy talk show. Once you learn the finishing techniques in this chapter, your knitting will be deserving of the
oohs
and
aahs
of a live studio audience.
Joining Knit Pieces Together
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make the connections between your knitted pieces as flat and invisible as possible. There are three basic types of joins you will make in your knitting: connecting the sides of two knit pieces together, as for the sides of sweaters; joining the top edges together, as you do on shoulder seams; and attaching the top of one knit piece to the side of another, as you would when sewing a sleeve into the body of a sweater.
When sewing any knit fabrics together, you should place the pieces next to each other on a flat surface, with their right sides facing up. Use safety pins to loosely pin your fabric together (start by placing pins on the outermost corners of your pieces, then place a few in between to hold the pieces in place while you sew). Always sew your seams using the same yarn that you knit with (unless you’re using a bulky or super-bulky yarn, in which case you should sew with a thinner yarn, but in the same color and fiber). You’ll also need a yarn needle with an eyehole large enough to accommodate your yarn.
Sewing Side Seams
Begin by threading a yarn needle with a length of yarn long enough to sew the entire seam, with at least another 12 inches left over. Then tack the yarn in place by pulling the needle up through the rightmost corner stitch at the bottom of the left-hand piece. Secure the yarn by inserting the needle back up through the same hole. Now bring the needle up through the leftmost corner stitch at the bottom of the right-hand piece, and then up through the same hole in the left-hand piece. Pull taut. You’ve made a little figure eight, and the two corners of your fabric should be right up close together.
Now, depending on what kind of join you’re making, you’ll follow one of these methods:
Using the Mattress Stitch on Stockinette Fabric
Take a close look at the side edge of a piece of stockinette fabric. If you carefully pull apart the edge stitch—which is usually a bit weird looking—and the first real row of knit V stitches, you will see something like a ladder of yarn bars that runs between them. Some folks call these
running bars.
You’ll be sewing the two sides together by stitching around these bars. Start by pinning your pieces together, right sides up, and tacking the yarn in place. Then do the following:
1
Pass the needle under the first two running bars of the right-hand piece of fabric, from the bottom to the top.
2
Now pass the needle under the first two running bars of the left-hand piece of fabric the same way.
3
Insert the needle down into the same point where it came out on the right-hand piece of fabric, carry it under the next two running bars, and come back up again.
4
Finally, insert the needle back into the same point where it came out on the left-hand piece of fabric, and come up two bars later.
Keep repeating those last two steps until you have about two or three inches done. Then pull the yarn taut (not tight) and watch as the two pieces of fabric come together and the seam becomes almost invisible. Just like magic!
N
OTE
:
The mattress stitch is intended to connect each row of knitting in one piece of fabric to each row of knitting in another piece of fabric. It will work out perfectly if you have the exact same number of rows in both your pieces. However, since nobody’s perfect, it is very likely that you
won’t
have the exact same number of rows in each piece. Don’t let it bother you. Just pick up some of the slack by sometimes taking only one running bar from one side and two running bars from the other side. That’ll even things out, and nobody will be the wiser.
Using the Mattress Stitch on Garter-Stitch Fabric
First, take a look at your reverse stockinette or garter fabric. Sure, it’s wall-to-wall purl bumps, but look carefully and you’ll see that half of the purl bumps are curving upward, like a smile, and the other half are curving downward, like an umbrella. The smiling bumps are called the
underbumps,
and the umbrella bumps are the
overbumps
. To sew two pieces of reverse stockinette or garter-stitch fabric together, you will pass your needle through an underbump from one side, and then through an overbump from the other side.
Let a smile be your umbrella
Start the same way as with stockinette fabric, by placing the pieces next to each other, right sides up, and tacking the yarn in place at the bottom corners of your fabric. Then:
1
Pass the needle under the bottom-most underbump on the left-hand piece of fabric.
2
Pass the needle under the bottom-most overbump on the right-hand piece of fabric.
3
Insert the needle underneath the next underbump on the left-hand piece of fabric.
4
Insert the needle under the next overbump on the right-hand piece of fabric.
